


From Ludwig

by Philosophizes



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Death, Family Drama, Gen, Post-WW2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of the Bombing of Berlin comes a new Germany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Ludwig

                The last time Cara saw her brother was just after the house started shaking.

                He had come down the stairs into the nice big basement where she lived-though she didn’t know it was a basement then, she’d just known it as ‘home’. Everywhere else was where _Brüder_ lived; where he protected her and made it a better place for her to go someday.

                She had been hiding in the corner, under the sheets she’d ripped off the bed to cower under. He had lifted them from her head, and she’d looked up and seen him and thrown herself at him.

                He’d held her tightly for a moment, and then sat down in the corner with her in his lap and wrapped the blankets around them both. Cara had cried into his jacket that she liked looking at so much, the black one with the shiny bits, and he’d hummed to her and stroked her hair as the house shook every so often, sending a new shock of terror through her each time.

                “It will be over soon, _Schwesterlein_ ,” he promised. “I’ll go and it will be over.”

                Cara didn’t want her _brüder_ to go; she never did. But she wanted the shaking to stop, too.

                He rocked her for a little while, and then raised her chin so she was looking at him. He reached under his collar and pulled out a chain she’d never seen before, with a cross she thought might have been familiar, and hung it around her neck. The metal cross bumped against her stomach.

                “There will be people,” he told her. “They will ask you things and you might not understand them. Whether you do or not, tell them: ‘I am Germany’- _‘Ich bin Deutschland’_. Can you say that?”

                She could, and did, even though she thought that she was Cara.

                He handed her a folded piece of off-white paper, and little heavy, with a wax seal on it. There was something written on the back, but she didn’t know what it said.

                “You will meet people. Maybe the people who ask you things, maybe not. But when you meet them- you will know who I mean when you do- tell them that this is for Feliciano from Ludwig.”

                She repeated that- _For Feliciano from Ludwig_ \- slowly and carefully, to make sure she remembered.

                He gave her another one of the folded papers.

                “For Gilbert from Ludwig.”

                _For Gilbert from Ludwig._

                Then he kissed her forehead, stood, bundled her in the blankets, told her to sleep, everything was going to be all right now, and went back up the stairs.

* * *

                People did come, eventually. She understood what they were saying to her, and she told them _Ich bin Deutschland_.

                They seemed startled by this, but she didn’t know why. They gave her to more people, in nice suits, but not as nice as _Brüder_ ’s black jacket had been, even though they still wore black jackets, who put in her a small set of rooms in someone’s house and gave her food and got her new clothes.

                 She held onto the folded papers, waiting for the people her brother had promised.

* * *

                Later, not very much but more than a week or two, she was taken to a big building and introduced to a man who seemed very interested in her. There were other people with him, who were saying things she didn’t understand, and who had folders.

                One of them was on the table, and she opened it.

                There was a picture of her brother on top. Cara took it out and walked over to the man and the others and held it up.

                _Where is my brother?_

                They told her he was dead.

* * *

                The men who said strange things let her keep the picture, but took her to another room where there were yet more strange men, and left her there.

                Everyone in the room turned to look at her.

                Cara looked back.

                These were the people _Brüder_ had told her about.

                _For Feliciano, from Ludwig._

                The man with the wavy blonde hair and the glasses and the furry coat shook his head and gently pushed the paper away.

                “Keep it,” he told her; and took her hand after she’d put the letter away again.

* * *

                The blonde man with the glasses and the fur took her to a house she didn’t recognize at first, but then she looked down the stairs behind the door in the hallway and saw her bed, and realized it was her brother’s house.

                The man went downstairs and took her bed apart and brought it upstairs and up the next set of stairs and set it up in a room that already had a bed.

                Cara looked at the pictures of her brother and the other people while he took the first bed apart and folded the sheets up and took everything out of the room. Then he came back and helped her put her sheets back on, and made her dinner, and put her to bed.

                The next morning, he found her a frame for her picture.

* * *

                Matthew took her to her first meeting, later.

                She was wearing a new dress with a warm jacket, black like her brother’s had been but furry like his was. He got her a chair and she sat next to him, kicking her feet and watching everyone else argue and yell. It would have scared her, a year or two earlier, but she had gotten used to people being angry now, even though Matthew always tried to keep her away from the worst of it.

                She liked Matthew.

                “-eel so sorry for Feliciano, _cher_ -”

                Cara slid off the seat and scampered over to the man-who-was-not-Matthew and Matthew-with-a-beard-and-no-glasses and tried to get their attention. They’d said Feliciano!

                The ignored her.

                “ _Deutschland_?” a soft voice asked.

                She looked over at a man who had his head on the table, regarded him for a moment, and presented the letter.

                _For Feliciano from Ludwig!_

                When he took it, his hands were trembling. He very carefully lifted the wax seal away, whole, from the paper; unfolded it, and started to read.

                He looked so sad that she gave him a big hug before going back to Matthew.

                She watched him the whole meeting; until he left early, without saying goodbye.

                _Don’t cry, Feliciano._

* * *

                Matthew took her to see the Wall.

                He let her get close enough to touch it and then pulled her back, pointing to the guard posts on top and telling her about her people on the other side.

                When they walked home, he told her stories about when she’d get to meet them all.

* * *

                Matthew told her he had to leave; and that it would be better this way, because she had to learn to live on her own.

                Cara cried and screamed, even though she was too big to do that now.

                _That’s what Brüder said! He said he’d leave and things would get better and he never came back he_ died-

* * *

                She saw him at the next meeting, and violated UN seating procedures by placing Germany between Cameroon and Canada.

                All three of them had lunch together.

* * *

                It was dark, and she was tired, and cold, and dirty with concrete dust, when the door opened.

                The man’s white hair shone in the light coming through the big front window facing the street outside, and his red eyes were dark in the shadow of his face.

                He stopped a few steps into the house and glared around him, at everything she had changed over the years and the things she’d kept, before settling on her herself.

                “ _You are not Germany_ ,” he told her, the loathing and pain undisguisable.

                Cara stood and held out her other letter.

                _To Gilbert, from Ludwig._

* * *

                She helped him clean out some of the older rooms neither she nor Matthew had ever touched, because the space simply hadn’t been needed.

                Feliciano came to help, and cried, and made dinner for everyone, and cried some more; then slept over.

* * *

                One day, after the cleaning was done, she found a folded piece of off-white paper, and little heavy, with a wax seal on it, on her desk in front of her _brüder_ ’s picture.            

                _Cara, from Ludwig_

               


End file.
